I learnt this style of baked potatoes from the Stephanie Alexander bible The Cook’s Companion. Prior to this I would wrap potatoes in foil and they would have soggy skins.
The results without the foil are amazing. I like to leave the potatoes for a little longer than needed to cook the flesh so they have a crusty skin.
I translated this method to my most favourite vegetable in the world sweet potato. It is so simple and easy to make and the bonus is I now use this method to have some sweet potato mash on hand for recipes like:
The sweet potatoes I had on hand for the photographs were quite huge! If you wanted to cook them quicker you could cut them, but I cooked them as they were.
I place them straight on to the wire racks in the oven, but they can drip liquid and make a mess so if you do this I would recommend placing a tray at the bottom of the oven to catch the mess.
- Sweet potatoes - as many as you need!
- Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.
- With a sharp knife stab each sweet potato a number of times evenly across the sweet potato.
- Place sweet potatoes on the rack in the oven. If you don't want any mess you could place them on a tray, however I prefer them on the rack and place an aluminium foil lined tray at the bottom of the oven.
- Bake for 1 to 1.5 hours depending on the size of your sweet potatoes.
- You can tell if they are cooked by pushing a skewer through the sweet potato or by pressing on the sweet potato - it should feel soft under the skin.
- You can eat them straight away as part of your meal. A dob of coconut cream goes well! Or if you want to make mashed sweet potato, simply scoop out the flesh with a spoon. Place the flesh into a large bowl and mash.
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